Editors, agents, and publishers were in full force!

There were publishers, editors, and agents galore, like Jessica Alvarez of Bookends (and a previous presenter at Passionate Ink!), along with Moe Ferrara and Kim Lionette! Then we had Fareeda Bullert and Julie Paulauski of Grand Central Publishing, Laura Bradford of Bradford Literary Agency, Lori Perkins from Riverdale Avenue Books, Rhonda Helms of Carina Press, and Sandra Bunino of Evernight Publishing. We’re super stoked these fabulous folks came through to celebrate at Nationals with us, and we know there were lots of great opportunities and reunions for RWA and PI members alike to reconnect or connect for the first time with these industry champions!

We’d like to give a special shout out to Bethany Burke of Blushing Books (@BlushingBooks), who was spectacularly kind enough to donate libations to our event — thank you so much!

Nummies, burlesque, and pasties for all!

To sate our wicked appetites, there were also juicy Big Apple Martinis, hot hors d’oeuvres, and not to mention these hot hunks:

Courtesy Angela Cappetta, LLC

And as if all THAT weren’t enough, we had several shows and a dance lesson from our main attraction, the hot and classy burlesque troupe from Bourbon & Lace Pinup & Cabaret — these guys were amazing, performing flexible feats of wanton panache to and fro — on and off stage! — to keep us all breathless and inspired to try their shenanigans at home.

Courtesy Angela Cappetta, LLC

To help everyone execute properly back in their own love nests, everyone’s gift bags included some lube from ID Lube (clit stem gel, anyone? candy-flavored lube tubes?), feather boas, treats from Adam&Eve (you can never have too many condoms!), and PASTIES! We were delighted to discover sparkly quality pasties for a reasonable price from our favorite new Seattle-based Etsy store, Perky Pasties — check ‘em out.

We learned that if you jump up and down you can get your tasseled pasties to twirl, and that if you’re super good at shimmying you can get ONE breast to twirl! Amazeballs.

Passionate Ink party games and awards!

We also played a fun game that PI member Harlowe Wilde found for us to play and get to know each other — the Sexy Slang game! It’s basically adult charades, and we had two teams face off: Perky Nipples and Sweet Lube. I can’t even remember who won, all I remember was that there was some wild gesticulating and breathless screaming … oh wait, maybe I’m mixing that up with something else but in any case, someone WON! And it was fabulous.

We also had, of course, the Passionate Plume winners to announce, but we also introduced some NEW awards for Passionate Ink members to celebrate each other: the Passionate Promoter and Passionate Participant awards! These were given to thank those members who’ve been especially proactive promoting PI via Twitter/Facebook/Goodreads, etc. or who’ve been extra engaged with the chapter by volunteering or interacting more often on the forums.

Given that we’re a virtual chapter, it can be hard to stay connected and keep the sizzle of our fun at Nationals alive for a whole year afterward, so we truly appreciate these passionate members and their commitment to making Passionate Ink a chapter to reckon with!

Aaaand, to top it all off, let’s give a big thank you to our PI Party volunteers, PI members who were kind enough to help us plan and set up the event the night of — you rock, guys!

Write spicy romance? Sign up for Passionate Ink!

And lastly, if you’re a member of RWA and you write erotic romance or erotica, we’d love to have you join us at Passionate Ink! We’re working on great new programming like special guest chats from established authors, as well as workshops to help you manage your career or improve in your craft as a writer of erotic romance/erotica, and it’s only here, at Passionate Ink! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at directors (at) passionateink.org! Or, follow us on Twitter @PassionateInk!

That’s the redux, folks, but we of course have a TON of photos — check out our gallery below (click on a thumb to open up the gallery viewer) to see what trouble we got up to!* Thanks again for a great party, and see you again next year in San Diego!